


The Last Cousland

by foundCarcosa



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-28
Updated: 2012-05-28
Packaged: 2017-11-06 04:59:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/414950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An alternate tale of the Grey Warden Shane Cousland, as told by her hound.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last Cousland

I am young. Still, the human girl is shorter than me. Little. Fragile. She pats my head boldly. She is not afraid. I like her.  
She calls me ‘Fluffy’. I don’t know what this means, but I know this is her name for me. Wherever I hear this name is home.

The house is big, very big. ‘Castle’ is their word for it. ‘Home’ is her word for it.  
She runs, and I chase her. She is growing, but still little. The mother doesn’t like it when I jump on furniture. I don’t.  
But the girl lets me sleep on her bed with her. ‘Safe’, she calls it. I agree.  
She is safe with me.

She is bigger now. But still little.  
She has secrets. It is bad to make lightning, and fire, and ice with hands. She must hide it away. Pretend she fights with fists and metal. This is ‘good’, she says.  
I don’t believe it because she doesn’t believe it.

Sometimes when she strokes my fur, I feel warmth in her hands. It is not fire, not burning, not pain. It is a soft warmth. Like home.  
It makes me sleepy. It gives me ‘safe’ feeling.  
I do not see how this is bad. I think the mother and the father, they are wrong.

She is even bigger now. She has new friends, friends that the mother and the father bring to the castle. But it is still me that sleeps on the bed with her. I am glad to still be her friend, even though she is bigger.  
But I think she will not need me as much. She is well trained and can protect herself.

The man that comes to the castle smells wrong. I try to warn her, but she tells me, ‘quiet’.  
I am quiet, but I wish she would listen to me.

I don’t think the bad thing, the thing that made the girl very sad, would have happened.

They attack in the night, and I attack back, and so does the girl. I am proud of the girl. I fight harder, because the girl is fierce and I should prove myself worthy to fight beside her.  
And then there is no one to fight. The castle smells like blood, but some of the blood is not enemy blood. I lick the tears from the girl’s face, but a strange man — smells of something that makes my hackles rise, but only a little bit, and it’s mixed up in a good smell so I am confused — takes her away.  
He lets me come along. I would have, anyway. The girl is my friend. No, the girl is… family. Like the mother and the father.  
I am glad to go with her. To keep her safe.

We are fighters now! The smell that the strange man that calls himself a “Grey Warden” has is now in the girl. But the girl is still my family. She still asks me to sleep next to her in the camp. I am not afraid of the smell anymore.  
We have new friends. I think they like me. Not the one who makes ice and lightning with her hands, too, the one who does these things and is not afraid to do them. Her words to me are angry. She does not accept my gifts.  
We have time. I will find a way to please her, because she is the girl’s friend, and the girl’s friends are my friends too.

We fight the things that smell like death.  
We always win.  
I am proud to be with the girl and her friends. We are doing good.  
I tell her, See, the lightning and fire and ice, they are for good things. I told you.  
I don’t know if she understands me, but she smiles. It is good when she smiles. I smile back, and kiss her face.  
She tells me my breath smells like death. I am confused — I did not eat any of the bad things we killed. But I smile back anyway. It is okay.

We are okay.

The things we fight, there are more and more of them. She paints herself with kaddis, and it is easier for me to find her in large groups of the bad things. I have to fight harder to make sure she is safe. This is good. I am made for this.  
I do not sleep as much. I stand outside of the tent. She sleeps with the man that wears the armour like hers. I think this is a good thing. They protect each other. They are like home to each other.  
Safe.

I am happy for the girl, who is not a girl anymore. She is a “Grey Warden”.

I think we will be okay. And maybe we have a ‘castle’ one day, too, with the man that wears the armour like her. And we will call it ‘home’.  
And maybe there will be another little girl, just like she used to be. And I will protect her, too.

But then one day, there is a big battle, the biggest battle. There is a strange flying creature that roars and shakes the earth and spits fire.

I am afraid.

She fights the flying creature — she calls it a “dragon” and tells me to stay out of the way, but she doesn’t understand, I have to protect her and her man and her friends — and I am still proud, but I am still afraid, too.  
I think the dragon is big danger. Big, big danger. For all of us.  
Maybe for me, too.

When she falls down, she calls for the man with the armour like hers. He is a very brave and strong man. I am glad for her, that she has him.  
He kills the flying creature, and I shout my approval. My mouth tastes of the blood of many bad things. I did good. But not as good as the man who has killed the flying creature. He has done a thing that saves a lot of people. This is the meaning of the word “hero”.

He is a worthy human. I am proud to know him.

But the girl is still lying down, and I am afraid.  
He runs to her and picks her up in his arms, but she isn’t there.  
I don’t understand. I kiss her, but she doesn’t smile at me. I tell her it’s okay. The “dragon” is gone, and this man is a good human and he will make sure we have a castle to live in because that is what good men do.

I tell her it is over, and we can be ‘home’ now.

But she does not hear me, and I think I know what this means.  
I didn’t protect the girl. She was not safe with me.

I lay quietly when they say the words over her body and put it deep in the ground, and I try to think of what I did wrong. But I think… maybe I did all I could. Maybe I was not enough.  
I did not kill the thing that killed my family. But the man who now wears a crown, he killed it. And before he leaves the place where they put my girl in the ground, I tell him he is good.

He pets my head once, and then he puts his arms around my neck. He is warm. Safe.  
Family.

But my girl gave me my name, and my home, and my purpose. She is mine and I am hers. I cannot leave her.  
That is how it must be.  
So I lay down on the place where they put her in the ground, and I close my eyes, and I think very hard about the castle where my girl and her man and me were to live. I think about the grass I would have rolled in, and the bones I would have buried, and the little girl that is so like my girl that I would have let pet me and call me my name. The little girl, she looks like my girl and the man in the armour and crown.

I lay down and I close my eyes and I think very hard of these things, and I forget about eating and drinking water and those other things I did when she was here with me.  
And I stay there until I see my girl again, and she is smiling at me, and she opens her arms for me.

I am home again, my girl still loves me, and the bad things are no more. All is well.


End file.
